Toward Omnidirectional Light Absorption by Plasmonic Effect for High-Efficiency Flexible Nonvacuum Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ Thin Film Solar Cells

Abstract

We have successfully demonstrated a great advantage of plasmonic Au nanoparticles for efficient enhancement of Cu(In,Ga)Se2(CIGS) flexible photovoltaic devices. The incorporation of Au NPs can eliminate obstacles in the way of developing ink-printing CIGS flexible thin film photovoltaics (TFPV), such as poor absorption at wavelengths in the high intensity region of solar spectrum, and that occurs significantly at large incident angle of solar irradiation. The enhancement of external quantum efficiency and photocurrent have been systematically analyzed via the calculated electromagnetic field distribution. Finally, the major benefits of the localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPR) in visible wavelength have been investigated by ultrabroadband pump-probe spectroscopy, providing a solid evidence on the strong absorption and reduction of surface recombination that increases electron-hole generation and improves the carrier transportation in the vicinity of pn-juction.

Improving Efficiency of Multicrystalline Silicon and CIGS Solar Cells by Incorporating Metal Nanoparticles

“…However, the associated increase in the surface area increases the rate of minority carrier recombination on the surface regions. Recently, the use of metal nanoparticle plasmonics to improve the efficiency of solar cells has been extensively studied [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16]. The three well-known methods for increasing photocurrent in solar cells by the incorporation of metal nanoparticles are as follows.…”

“…Nahm et al incorporated Au nanoparticles with diameter of approximately 100 nm into titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) thin films for use in dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs), and improved their power-conversion efficiency from 2.7% to 3.3% [6]. Chen et al demonstrated that Au plasmonic nanoparticles at the pn-junction interface of copper-indium-gallium-diselenide (CIGS) /cadmium sulfide (CdS) improved the efficiency of CIGS solar cells from 8.31% to 10.36% [8]. …”

Semiconductor Thin Film Based Metasurfaces and Metamaterials for Photovoltaic and Photoelectrochemical Water Splitting Applications

“…Thinning down these trapping architectures is not only for boosting their photoconversion efficiency but it can also open up the opportunity to exploit them in flexible, wearable photoelectronics. An ink‐printing CIGS based ultrathin flexible solar cell was proposed where the incorporation of nanoplasmonic units in the interface of pn junction have improved efficiency to a relatively high value of 10.36% (while the efficiency for bare structure was 8.31%) . This solar cell reveals near 80% flat EQE from 550 to 1100 nm.…”

A Comprehensive Study of One-Step Selenization Process for Cu(In1−x Ga x )Se2 Thin Film Solar Cells

“…Moreover, its band gap can be engineered by the partial substitution of indium by gallium, which further renders the flexibility of manipulating the optical absorption [1]. Nowadays, various methods for preparing CIGS absorber layers have been implemented, including vacuum processes (co-evaporation [2], sputtering [3], and pulsed laser deposition [4]) and nonvacuum processes (ink-printing [5] and electrochemical deposition [6]). However, the high quality CIGS thin films for laboratory-scale or module-level solar cells are usually prepared by co-evaporation or sputtering processes.…”